I would like to state for the record that I am highly insulted, offended, ticked, miffed, irritated, annoyed, ill, perturbed, aggravated, and any other synonym for mad that presently escapes me.

It happened while I was ironing the other morning.  Yes, I iron.  I don’t want to look like I slept in my clothes—and I hate hanger humps.  The television was on in the bedroom which is right next to the utility room so I could listen to a news channel that shall remain nameless so there is no free publicity and no one questions my intelligence.  I do that every morning so I’ll know whether or not the world ended somewhere while I peacefully snoozed.  I had one eye on the ironing, one eye on the cat, and both ears on the news.  I should probably explain that Sherman (the cat) is a jumper; the kind of cat that is sitting quietly at your feet one minute and staring you in the face the next—which explains why one eye is on him at all times.  But I digress, as I often do.

Most mornings there are usually more commercials than actual news, and that morning was no exception.  I tend to take a mental break when the commercials come on, reserving my full attention for the condition of the world at large.  But this morning something caught my ear, something I had heard and seen many times before but had never actually grasped until that very moment.  A ton of bricks could not have hit any harder.

“Do you want to look younger and more attractive?”  That was the question posed.

I beg your pardon?  Did you just say that youth is attractive and therefore, by implication, old and wrinkly is unattractive, as in ugly?  Are you saying that if I go through this process and look younger then I will be more attractive but if I choose not to I’ll just stay ugly—and continue to get uglier as I continue to age?  And how are we gauging “attractiveness”?  Is there some universal scale I don’t know about?  In less than sixty seconds I had been repeatedly assured by some paid spokesperson that if I just partook of this particular product/service, I would not only look younger, but would then  be more attractive and would therefore have greater self-esteem and would beautify the world at large.  Ok.  That last part may have been a stretch, but youth and beauty and the idea that they must co-exist had just been espoused by this tempter in my television.

All right then—suppose I do this and I do look younger?  What happens in five years . . . or ten?  When do I need to look younger again? At what point does it become a ridiculously vain attempt on my part to stop Time in its tracks?  Is this planned obsolescence, kind of like panty hose and computers and iPhones?  Suppose I come out looking like someone I don’t recognize, or worse yet, my grandsons don’t recognize?  What about my hands?  You know people can see them, too, and if they’re all wrinkled and gnarled then their appearance is inconsistent with the façade improvement that took place just a few inches higher.  And what happens when I take off my clothes?  Does my body make a liar of my face?

Now, am I really that annoyed at a television commercial whose only purpose is to promote a particular product by enticing me with a non-surgical fountain of youth?  Probably not, but there is a deeper truth here that I can’t ignore.  Youth is wonderful, even if George Bernard Shaw felt it was wasted on the young.  But youth does not have experience.  Youth does not have an appreciation of life.  Perhaps that is why it has physical beauty.  As we approach the end of our time on this earth, a subtle transformation is revealed, not unlike the sole masterpiece on which an artist has labored for decades.  Some of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen are those that bear the marks of their years, the wrinkles and crows’ feet that come from a lifetime of laughter, the furrows across their foreheads that have been etched by worry and pain.    Some of the most handsome faces I have ever gazed upon are those that are time-worn, rugged in their endurance of life and its trials.  Time has written upon their faces with lines that speak of joys and struggles, allowing me to see the person they have become, molded by events and people and years of living.  I am not in awe of their outward beauty; I am drawn to their souls.

Youth was meant for the young.  They are the only ones who wear it well.  When I die, I want my body spent, my life stamped across my face.  I have earned every wrinkle and every crease and each one tells a story.  I don’t want my hands to be soft and dainty.  I want them to be hands that have worked hard and reached out to others and eased the burdens of those around me.  May we always remember that the face looking back at us in the mirror each morning is the face that others may someday gaze down upon.  May it be a face that speaks of service and living and the knowledge that appearance is not a reflection of the person.  May our lives have been such that, as Mark Twain said, when we die, even the undertaker will be sorry.

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